Pages

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Oscar Nomination Morning

Oscar Nom Morning

I love Oscar nomination morning. Because I have to go to work, this morning I'm sitting on the coach with my wife while she's feeding our baby girl. Because various moves over the past couple years I have had to adjust my Oscar morning routine to various time zones...but watching the award nominations announced is a favorite ritual. Today, I'm doing it with my infant daughter and wife. What a treat!

Good Morning Sid Ganis and Forest Whitaker. First Thoughts.

The nominations begin their announcements, and only some minor surprises...Michael Shannon over Dev Patel in the supporting category.

All 4 Doubt performances receive nods.

We don't hear Kate Winslet's name in the supporting race (as soon as I heard Amy Adams I didn't think I'd hear Trajni P Henson's...but no double nod for Winslet).

But Winslet's lead actress nod is for the Reader which certainly makes this years best actress race (Hathaway, Jolie, Melissa Leo, Streep, Winslet) a very competitive race.

When I heard Bolt got an animation nod, I knew there was no Waltz with Bashir animated nod.

Of course there will be excitement in the press about Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie BOTH receiving nominations (Benjamin Button, Changeling)

But when the alphabetical announcements of Best Picture was most surprising when Dark Knight got passed over...at that moment, the only film I could see jumping on the list based off the mornings previous nods was that The Reader would be nominated, especially since Stephen Daldry got nominated for Best Director.

Stephen Daldry is now 3 for 3 with the Oscars. I don't know if that's ever been done before...with nominations for his 3 feature length films: Billy Elliot, The Hours, and now The Reader.

Finally, no Dark Knight love like I might have expected. We'll see once the full list are released what films receive the most noms, and how these films fared in other categories.

Looking at the Nods Closer - The One's Not Announced Live

The first thing I checked out was to check the song category to make sure High School Musical 3 didn't get a song nod. And the fact was that only 3 songs were selected for best original song. "Down to Earth" from Wall-E and 2 Songs from Slumdog Millionaire, "Jai Ho" and "O Saya."

Wow, "Wanted" got a couple nominations in the sound editing and mixing categories. And Australia got at least one nod in the costume category.

And everytime I look at a list The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is included.

Very sad. I was dearly hoping that THE WRESTLER would get its due in the BEst Picture category. Instead, the Academy chose manipulative sentimentality (BENJAMIN BUTTON) and incompetent staginess (FROST/NIXON) over this brilliant film.

But how on Earth does Springsteen's aching "The Wrestler" not get nominated for Best Song??? Ludicrous beyond belief.

That Brad Pitt nomination is sitting with me wrong as well. 52 minutes of his performance were computer generated, yethe gets a nomination? Thank goodness Rourke will scissor kick him into submission come Oscar night.

Privacy Policy

This site uses third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.